


On the Equilibrium of Planes

by jamaillith



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), F/M, Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 17:49:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3945988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamaillith/pseuds/jamaillith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the <a href="http://such-heights.dreamwidth.org/459287.html">MCU Kissing Fest 2015</a> prompt, "Bruce/Natasha, hold".</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Equilibrium of Planes

"Do you ever worry that this is our idea of romance?"

Bruce glances up from his contemplation of the dismal Russian countryside. He frowns. 

"Wait, this is romance? This is.. we're supposed to be doing romance?"

Natasha shrugs, returning her attention to the laptop balanced across her knees and the HYDRA database filling up the screen. Their mission is currently what has become a fairly routine smash-and-not-grab-very-much, chasing down leads for the sceptre that usually amount to a couple of ex-Cold War meatheads with delusions of grandeur and way too much tech for their paygrade. Natasha is monitoring intel coming in from their next target, who may or may not be holed up in Veshchovo air base 50 miles away. But she figures there's no harm in doing some homework while she's got the downtime.

Tony is making jokes about Clint's tights over the comms channel. Every so often there's a distant thump of heavy weapons fire. Natasha's calculated their evac time at two point five minutes, tops.

Still, Bruce is on edge, because Bruce is always on edge when he's forced to sit in the hanger of the Quinjet waiting for someone to tell him that he's got to lose a few hours of consciousness and wake up alone and naked in a cold wet woodland. Natasha can understand that. Hence, romance.

"Just the two of us, out here in the lonely wilderness, guarding a big pile of weaponry." She grins wryly at the screen. "Feels like romance to me."

Bruce grunts. Natasha can tell without looking round that he's gone back to staring out at their surroundings -- a few scrubby bushes, broken up concrete and some rust-covered sheds; not much of a view. But the view isn't what he's seeing.

She pushes out a breath, sets up a few searches to run automatically, tells JARVIS to ping her cortical implant if anything horrendous happens, fires off an email to her contact in Librec and closes the laptop. She stands and walks across the hanger towards the open door where Bruce is sitting just beyond the reach of the light rain falling in grey sheets around them. The air smells like damp earth and cooling metal.

"Hey." She drops down beside him. She wants to reach out and touch his shoulder, run her fingers over the tense muscles rounding out his shirt, but she knows better than that. Knows Bruce better than that. "Hey. We have the lullaby. It'll work, you know.. if it needs to."

Bruce's eyes narrow, the skin across his knuckles tightening ever so slightly. From an earbud hanging beside his neck comes the faintly tinny sound of Verdi's Requiem. "I know," he sighs, "I know. I just don't.." He glances over at her; a subconscious part of her mind notes that his eyes are still brown. "I hate the waiting. Never thought I'd want it to happen."

"Yeah, big guy, I know." Natasha looks out at the clouds, half listening to Cap throwing orders at Tony to take out the guardsmen in the East tower. "But it could be worse." She glances sideways at Bruce. "It could be raining."

Bruce cracks a faint smile, she guesses more for her benefit than anything else. Without looking around he untangles his fingers, reaching for her hand and covering it with his, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles. Natasha schooled herself long ago not to flinch when someone touched her, but she can't help assessing the distance between her free hand and the heavy gauge tranq gun on the table behind them. Can't stop measuring the tightness of the muscles in the side of his neck, his jaw.

His eyes, tracking the wind through the distant trees.

Natasha closes her fingers around his, squeezing them lightly. She lifts his hand and gently kisses the place where his thumb meets his wrist. Bruce sighs out a breath and when she looks up he's watching her, an unreadable expression on his face, like he's trying to figure something out he doesn't really want to know. 

"Nat -- " he begins.

"Okay, it's just another dead end. Hey, Romanoff, you there?" Tony's voice over the comm link. Natasha raises her hand and lightly touches Bruce's cheek with the backs of her fingers. His eyes slide shut at her touch, or maybe at the sound of a sonic boom in the distance that means the team is on their way back.

"Yeah," she says, "I'm here."


End file.
